September 16, 2007

Finally got my paperwork together for the post-graduate work permit! After following up with the School of Graduate Studies a number of times, I finally got the letter thanks to a follow-up by my department. Now I have to wait for my work permit...

Notified IBM about possible delays. I'm glad that they're flexible.

Applied for IELTS, an English proficiency test that will be useful for my permanent residency application.

Started working on proposal for Emacs book. Read A-C of the EmacsWiki.

Attended a Toronto Linux Users Group meeting that promised to be a vi vs. emacs debate. Greatly amused to hear it turn into an ed vs everything else debate due to old-timers.

Watched "Philippine Science" with W- at the Toronto International Film Festival. Imagine that—a movie about my high school!

Baked a cake for Mark Chignell, my research supervisor. Well-received. Also, got back in touch with Calum Tsang.

Vine-ripened tomatoes were on sale at No Frills, so we bought some 15
pounds of plump, red, juicy, fragrant tomatoes. Mmm! We wanted to try
canning our own sauce, so we picked up mason jars as well. As it
turned out, canning your own vegetarian spaghetti sauce looks like a
difficult process if you want to minimize the risk of food poisoning.
We opted for the easy way out instead, freezing the spaghetti sauce
flat in freezer bags. It came to about 4 liters of sauce. Where did
all the rest of the tomatoes go? Probably splattered around the
kitchen... it was a mess!

I had a lot of fun pulping what seemed like a hundred tomatoes. I
simply couldn't stay awake long enough to see the process through, but
W- kept the simmering sauce company late into the night. We look
forward to trying some of it soon. I hope we actually managed to save
time and money in the process, or it'll be one of those
once-in-a-lifetime adventures. ;) (As long as it's not an
end-of-a-lifetime adventure, right?)